Where did the Sepoy Rebellion take place? | Reference.com Where did the Sepoy Rebellion take place? A: Quick Answer The Sepoy Rebellion began in Meerut, India in May 1857 and continued until it was suppressed in April 1859. During this time, the rebellion spread to Delhi, the Ganges Valley, central India and parts of Bengal. Full Answer The Sepoy Rebellion was sparked by the British troops' introduction of the Enfield rifle. To load the rifle, soldiers had to bite the end of a greased cartridge. Because Hindus feared the grease came from sacred cows and Muslims feared it came from unclean pigs, the sepoys rebelled against the British. During the Sepoy Rebellion, the sepoys murdered hundreds of Europeans. This rebellion was seen by some as the start of India's fight for independence from colonial powers. Postcolonial Studies | Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 · 2 Comments · In Terms & Issues The profound hypocrisy and inherent barbarism of bourgeois civilization lies unveiled before our eyes, turning from its home, where it assumes respectable forms, to the colonies, where it goes naked.

Did they not, in India, to borrow an expression of that great robber, Lord Clive himself, resort to atrocious extortion, when simple corruption could not keep pace with their rapacity? While they prated in Europe about the inviolable sanctity of the national debt, did they not confiscate in India the dividends of the rajahs, who had invested their private savings in the Company’s own funds? While they combated the French revolution under the pretext of defending “our holy religion,” did they not forbid, at the same time, Christianity to be propagated in India, and did they not, in order to make money out of the pilgrims streaming to the temples of Orissa and Bengal, take up the trade in the murder and prostitution perpetrated in the temple of the Juggernaut? These are the men of “Property, Order, Family, and Religion.” Karl Marx, The New-York Daily Tribune. 22 July, 1853.

The story of the Sepoy War of 1857, (an attempt at a compromise between two more controversial titles, ‘the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857′ and ‘the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857,’ though “insurgency”might also fit) began long before March of 1857. The history of the war delves deep into the colonization and conquest of India and the cultural and religious oppression imposed on Indians by British rule. Furthermore, the telling of the history of the war is, to this day, an ongoing battle between two competing narratives, the history belonging to the British that won the war, and the history claimed by the Indians who were defeated. This article is an attempt to present a history of the Sepoy War that is derived from various points of view, accounting for the context of the histories related, and the points of view of the historians relating them. Indian states during Revolt of 1857/CC Licensed The East India Company was a massive export company that was the force behind much of the colonization of India (See Spice Trade in India ). The power of the East India Company took nearly 150 years to build.

As early as 1693, the annual expenditure in political “gifts” to men in power reached nearly 90,000 pounds (Marx 23). In bribing the Government, the East India Company was allowed to operate in overseas markets despite the fact that the cheap imports of South Asian silk, cotton, and other products hurt domestic business. By 1767, the Company was forced into an agreement that is should pay 400,000 pounds into the National Exchequer annually. By 1848, however, the East India Company’s financial difficulties had reached a point where expanding revenue required the massive expansion of British territories in South Asia. The Government began to set aside adoption rights of native princes and began the process of annexation of more than a dozen independent Rajs between 1848 and 1854 (Marx 51; Kaye 30).

In an article published in The New York Daily Tribune on July 28, 1857, Karl Marx notes that “in 1854 the Raj of Berar, which comprises 80,000 square miles of land, a population from four to five million, and enormous treasures, was forcibly seized” (Marx 51). (See Geography and Empire , Marx and the Idea of Commodity ) In order to consolidate and control these new holdings, a well-established army of 200,000 South Asians officered by 40,000 British soldiers dominated India by 1857. The last vestiges of independent Indian states had disappeared and the East India Company exported tons of gold, silk, cotton, and a host of other precious materials back to England every year. Religion Historians like J.A.B. Palmer and John Kaye trace the origins of the soldiers’ rebellion at Meerut to the Lee-Enfield Rifle. It was developed at the Enfield arsenal by James P. Lee and fired a .303 caliber ammunition that had to manually loaded before firing.

Loading involved biting the end of the cartridge, which was greased in pig fat and beef tallow. This presented a problem for native soldiers, as pig fat is a haraam, or forbidden, substance to Muslims, and beef fat is, likewise, deemed inauspicious for certain Hindus. Thus, the revolt occurred as a reaction to this particular intrusion into Hindu and Muslim culture, and then caught on as a national rebellion. Palmer dramatically relates this discovery, according to Captain Wright, commanding the Rifle Instruction Depot: Somewhere about the end of the third week in January 1857, a khalasi, that is to say a labourer, accosted a high Brahmin sepoy and asked for a drink of water from his lotah (water-pot). The Brahmin refused on the score of caste. The khalasi then said, “You will soon lose your caste, as ere long you will have to bite cartridges covered with the fat of pigs and cows,” or, it is added, “words to that effect.” (Palmer 15) Furthermore, historians taking similar positions argue that British legislation that interfered with traditional Hindu or Muslim religious practices were a source of antagonism.

Palmer and Kaye also argue throughout their respective work that the prohibition of practices such as saathi (often transliterated “sati”), or the ritual suicide of widows on their husbands’ funeral pyres, became a source of outrage. In other words, the growing intrusion of western culture became an impetus for rebellious soldiers, fearful that their culture was being annihilated. The long-belabored significance of the Lee-Enfield cartridge is challenged by the work of historians like Marx, Collier, Majumdar, Chaudhuri, and Malleson. These historians argue that the actions of soldiers at Meerut were the “last straw” for South Asians who had been victims of British cultural and class-based oppression and antagonism, and discard the notion that religion played an overwhelmingly vital role in fomenting revolt. For them, the root causes of the insurgency cannot be traced to a single, well-defined set of events and causes, but rather stemmed from an ongoing set of conflicts. Divide and Conquer Col. G.B. Malleson argues that forcing Western ideas on an Eastern people fundamentally backfired and the “divide and conquer” tactics employed by the British in India ultimately sowed the seeds of the rebellion.

He notes, “action of a different character … so dear to the untravelled Englishman, or forcing the ideas in which he has been nurtured upon the foreign people with whom he has brought into contact, assisted … to loosen the bonds of discipline, which, up to that period, had bound the [Sepoy] to his officer” (Malleson 8). In other words, the Sepoy soldiers found themselves constantly pitted against their countrymen in an army governed by what common soldiers came to feel were outside influences. In a colonial setting, this is the prime breeding ground for a coup (or in this case, a revolt) because any soldier’s allegiance is governed by competition with other soldiers in currying favor and accumulating power, not by discipline or obedience to the orders of superior officers, and he begins to affiliate himself with his own people rather than the military ethics forced on him. (See Nationalism ) Expansionism Greater still was the influence of British expansionism on the Sepoy Rebellion. Richard Collier explains how rapidly increasing territorial conquest also intensified Indian unrest: These annexations were a source of discontent and anxiety to many people besides the sepoys.

In eight years, Canning’s predecessor, the despotic Lord Dalhousie, at 35 the youngest Governor-General India had ever known, had annexed over 250,000 square miles — an area three times the size of England and Ireland. The Punjab, Sattara, Nagpur — Dalhousie’s hands had stretched out to embrace them all. ‘An Indian Governor General,’ stormed The Hindu Patriot, ‘is chartered to destroy dynasties with a scratch of his quill.’ Indignities were heaped upon crowned heads: the jewels of the Royal Family of Nagpur were publicly auctioned in Calcutta. (Collier 19) Participating in the military conquest of local authorities, then, and having first-hand knowledge of the effects of British expansionism would have fomented resistance in the Sepoys. Torture and Oppression On August 28, 1857, Marx published an article in The New York Daily Tribune in order to “[show] that the British rulers of India are by no means such mild and spotless benefactors of the Indian people as they would have the world believe” (Marx 72).

Marx cites the official Blue Books — entitled “East India (Torture) 1855-57″ — that were laid before the House of Commons during the sessions of 1856 and 1857. The reports revealed that British officers were allowed an extended series of appeals if convicted or accused of brutality or crimes against Indians. Concerning matters of extortion in collecting public revenue, the report indicates that officers had free rein of any methods at their disposal (Marx 73). Torture became a method for financial exploitation in colonial India, and was challenged by a petition from the Madras Native Association presented in January of 1856. The petition was dismissed on the basis of a lack of evidence, despite the fact that, according to Marx, “there was scarcely any investigation at all, the Commission sitting only in the city of Madras, and for but three months, while it was impossible, except in very few cases, for the natives who had complaints to make to leave their homes” ( 74).

Marx also refers to Lord Dalhousie’s statements in the Blue Books that there was “irrefragable proof” that various officers had committed “gross injustice, to arbitrary imprisonment and cruel torture” (76). In addition to torture, the Company levied extremely large taxes on the Indian people. Collier describes taxes as “a cynical outrage. A man could not travel twenty miles without paying toll at a river ferry, farmed out by the Company to private speculators. Land Tax, often demanded before the crop was raised, was made in quarterly installments … the annual rent for an acre of land was 3 s[hillings], yet the produce of that acre rarely averaged 8 s[hillings] in value” (Collier 20). Marx’s position, as illustrated by the introductory quote to this page, is that the Indians were victims of both physical and economic forms of class oppression by the British. In Marx’s analysis, the clash between the soldiers and their officers is the inevitable conflict that is the result of capitalism and imperialism. The Rebellion The military history of the rebellion is straightforward.

Prior to the “mutiny” at Meerut on May 9th, 1857, fires broke out on January 22nd near Calcutta. An incident occurred on February 25th of that year when the 19th regiment mutinied at Berhampore, and the 34th Regiment rebelled at Barrackpore on the 31st of March. At Berhampore, the regiment allowed one of its men to advance with a loaded musket upon the parade-ground in front of a line and open fire on his superior officer; a battle ensued. April saw fires at Allahabad, Agra, an Ambala, but the spark that lit the powder keg went off on May 9th in Meerut. Members of the 3rd regiment of light cavalry were awaiting sentencing and imprisonment for refusal to obey orders and to put the Lee-Enfield .303 caliber cartridge into their mouths. Once imprisoned, the 11th and 20th cavalry assembled and broke rank and turned on their commanding officers. After liberating the 3rd regiment, chaos ensued in Meerut, and the rebels engaged the remaining British Troops.

Meerut was the singlemost evenly balanced station in India in terms of the numbers of British and Indian soldiers. Troops and rebels were on near-even terms with 2,028 European Troops versus 2,357 sepoys, but the British had 12 field guns and the sepoys had no artillery. Both Collier and Marx indicate that the rebellion would have ended there had Major-General William Hewitt cut off the rebel army at the bridge between Meerut and Delhi, some 40 miles away, with added weapons (Collier 40). The 38th, 54th, and 74th regiments of infantry and native artillery under Bahkt Khan (c.1797- c.1859) joined the rebel army at Delhi in May. June 1857 marked the battle of Kanpur (Cawnpore). The last Maratha prince, Baji Rao II, decreed his title and 80,000 pound annual pension to his son Nana Sahib (c.1820- c.1859) and was refused twice.

Despite Sahib’s attempts to push his claim, Lord Dalhousie refused the Hindu nobleman. Thus, in June 1857, Nana Sahib led the sepoy battalions at Crawnpore against the British. Nana Sahib sent word to Sir Hugh Wheeler, commander of the British forces at Cawnpore warning of the attack, guaranteeing him safe passage. On June 27, Nana Sahib broke the pact and trapped Wheeler in his palace. The events leading up to Wheeler’s surrender and death have been recorded as the Cawnpore Massacre. The Cawnpore Massacres In the words of Sir Colin Campbell, leader of the British forces during the war: Never was devised a blacker scheme than that which Nena Sahib had planned. Our miserable countrymen were conducted faithfully enough to the boats-officers, men, women, and children. The men and officers were allowed to take their arms and ammunition with them, and were escorted by nearly the whole of the rebel army. It was about eight o’clock a.m. when all reached the riverside — a distance of a mile and a half.

Those who embarked first pushed off from the shore; but others found it difficult to get their boats off the banks, as the rebels had placed them as high as possible. At this moment the report of three guns was heard from the Nena’s camp. The mutineers suddenly leveled their muskets, guns opened from the banks, and the massacre commenced. Some of the boats were set on fire, volley upon volley was fired upon the poor fugitives, numbers of whom were killed on the spot … A few boats crossed over to the opposite bank, but there a regiment of native infantry (the 17th), just arrived from Azimghur, was waiting for them; and in their eagerness to slay the “Kaffirs,” rode their horses belly deep into the river to meet the boats, and hack our unhappy country men and women to pieces. (Campbell 112) Andrew Ward’s historical narrative, Our Bones Are Scattered, also relates an account of the terrible and bloody massacre that followed the rebellion at Cawnpore, as well as Delhi and Meerut. By July, when Nana Sahib had captured Gwalior, he was reinstated as prince.

The Siege of Delhi The siege of Lucknow lasted roughly from July 1st to August 31st. The commanding British officer, Sir Henry Lawrence, died early on during the siege. By July 25th two-thirds of the British forces had retreated across the river and Delhi had been taken by early September. Bahadur Shah, the last surviving Mogul ruler was installed as ruler and the devastating battle between rebel and British forces for control Delhi ensued. Soldiers faced down the horrific sight of the impregnable walls of Delhi and “more than fifty guns and mortars belching fire at Delhi’s northern walls from the water bastion on the east to the Mori bastion on the west” (Collier 246). As the siege wore on the Punjabi forces fighting for the British began to weary and there was talk of a retreat. Under General John Nicholas, Delhi had toppled by September 20th, at the cost of 3,835 soldiers, British and Indian, and 378 horses (Collier 264). Rebel forces retreated to Lucknow where the siege was approaching three months in length.

There the war lasted until late November, until the rebels were driven to defeat in the Ganges Valley in December and January by Hugh Rose and Colin Campbell. By July 8, 1858, a peace treaty was signed and the war ended. By 1859, Rebel leaders Bahkt Khan and Nana Sahib had been slain in battle. Conclusion Though the Sepoy War has been dismissed as a chaotic, disorganized peasant uprising, several facts go undisputed that offer a counterargument. The “unorganized peasants” of India fought one of the most powerful empires in the world to near defeat with limited resources and even more limited training. Nevertheless, the lesson of the Sepoy War is not one of victory or justice, but failure. Though the exact cause of the Sepoy War has yet to be agreed upon, and it is likely that there were many complex causes rather than one, it is clear that British interference governments and the oppression of the Indian people, religious and economic, created a bloody revolution. Fictional & Narrative Literature on the Sepoy War Alavi, Seema. The Sepoys and the Company: Tradition and Transition 1770-1830.

New York: Oxford U P, 1995. Farrell, J.G. The Siege of Krishnapur. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1985 (orig. 1973; Booker Prize winner). Fenn, Clive Robert. For the Old Flag: A Tale of the Mutiny. London: Sampson Low, 1899. Grant, James. First Love and Last Love: A Tale of the Mutiny. New York: G. Routledge & Sons, 1869. Kaye, Mary Margaret. Shadow of the Moon. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1979. Masters, John. Nightrunners of Bengal. New York: Viking Press, 1951. Raikes, William Stephen. 12 Years of a Soldier’s Life In India. Boston: Ticknor and Fields, 1860. Works Cited Campbell, Sir Colin. Narrative of the Indian Revolt. London:George Vickers, 1858. Collier, Richard. The Great Indian Mutiny. New York: Dutton, 1964.

“Indian Mutiny.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. Web. 23 Mar. 1998. < >. Kaye, John William. A History of the Sepoy War In India. London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1878. Keene, H. George. British Administration During the Revolt of 1857. New Delhi: Inter- India Publications, 1985. “Lee-Enfield rifle.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc. Web. 23 Mar. 1998. < >. Malleson, Colonel G.B. The Indian Mutiny of 1857. New York: Scribner & Sons, 1891. Marx, Karl & Freidrich Engels. The First Indian War of Independence 1857-1859. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1959. Palmer, J.A.B.

The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut In 1857. Cambridge: University Press, 1966. Stokes, Eric. The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Ward, Andrew. Our Bones Are Scattered. New York: Holt & Co., 1996. Author: Nilesh Patel, Spring 1998 Last edited: June 2012 In which country did the Sepoy Mutiny against British rule take place? A. Rhodesia B. Egypt C. India D. Indochina You have new items in your feed. Click to view. Question and answer In which country did the Sepoy Mutiny against British rule take place? A. Rhodesia B. Egypt C. India D. Indochina India was the country that Sepoy Mutiny against British rule took place. In which country did the Sepoy Mutiny against British rule take place? A. Rhodesia B. Egypt C. India D. Indochina New answers This answer has been confirmed as correct, not copied, and helpful.

Confirmed by yumdrea [5/14/2014 4:28:40 PM] Comments Log in or sign up first. Questions asked by flutter_belle selymi M Guglielmo Marconi raced against Nikola Tesla and others to devised the radio, a system of transmitters and receivers to send messages through the air without wires. Added 6/11/2014 8:57:59 AM This answer has been confirmed as correct, not copied, and helpful. Cecil Rhodes is the British businessman used his personal fortune to carve out a new country in southern Africa that he named after himself. Added 5/14/2014 5:54:24 PM Who invented the telephone and also worked to improve the lives of deaf people? A. Thomas Edison B. Alexander Graham Bell C. Gottlieb Daimler D. Andrew Carnegie Weegy: Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and also worked to improve the lives of deaf people. User: Which advancement in transportation during the late 1800s is Karl Benz associated with? A. steamship B. bicycle C. automobile D.

railroad Weegy: Karl Benz is associated with Automobile during the late 1800s. (More) Question|Asked by flutter_belle Sepoy Sepoy Mutiny 1857-58 By the year 1857 the British had established complete political control of India. As Western education was introduced and missionaries eroded Hindu society resentment among Indian people grew and it was joined by unease among the old governing class when the British decided to formally abolish the Mughal Empire. The mutiny of the Sepoy (= native troops in the British army) began on May 10, 1857, when Indian soldiers who had been placed in irons for refusing to accept new cartridges were rescued by their comrades. The greased cartridges had to be bitten off before use, and the manufacturers had supplied a fat of beef and pork - repulsive to both Hindus and Moslems. The Indian garrison at Delhi joined the mutineers and proclaimed Bahadur Shah, the titular Mughal emperor as their leader.The capture of Delhi turned the mutiny into a wide-spread revolt.

But the leaders were not united, because they sought to revive former Hindu and Muslim regimes, which traditionally had been opposed to each other. The British had some advantages. They did receive reinforcements from Britain, and they had a base in Bengal, and in the Punjab the Sikhs were so hostile to the Muslims that they supported the British against the Mughal restoration in Delhi. The British recaptured Delhi in the fall of 1857, further campaigns followed the next year and by the spring of 1858 the British were again in full control of India. Indian Mutiny | Indian history | Britannica.com Indian history Alternative Titles: First War of Independence, Sepoy Mutiny Related Topics Nana Sahib Indian Mutiny, also called Sepoy Mutiny, widespread but unsuccessful rebellion against British rule in India in 1857–58. Begun in Meerut by Indian troops (sepoys) in the service of the British East India Company , it spread to Delhi , Agra , Kanpur , and Lucknow . In India it is often called the First War of Independence and other similar names. Indian troops during the Indian Mutiny.

Photos.com/Thinkstock Background To regard the rebellion merely as a sepoy mutiny is to underestimate the root causes leading to it. British paramountcy—i.e., the belief in British dominance in Indian political, economic, and cultural life—had been introduced in India about 1820. The British increasingly used a variety of tactics to usurp control of the Hindu princely states that were under what were called subsidiary alliances with the British. Everywhere the old Indian aristocracy was being replaced by British officials. One notable British technique was called the doctrine of lapse , first perpetrated by Lord Dalhousie in the late 1840s. It involved the British prohibiting a Hindu ruler without a natural heir from adopting a successor and, after the ruler died or abdicated , annexing his land. To those problems may be added the growing discontent of the Brahmans , many of whom had been dispossessed of their revenues or had lost lucrative positions. India: The mutiny and great revolt of 1857–59 Another serious concern was the increasing pace of Westernization , by which Hindu society was being affected by the introduction of Western ideas. Missionaries were challenging the religious beliefs of the Hindus.

The humanitarian movement led to reforms that went deeper than the political superstructure. During his tenure as governor-general of India (1848–56), Lord Dalhousie made efforts toward emancipating women and had introduced a bill to remove all legal obstacles to the remarriage of Hindu widows. Converts to Christianity were to share with their Hindu relatives in the property of the family estate. There was a widespread belief that the British aimed at breaking down the caste system. The introduction of Western methods of education was a direct challenge to orthodoxy, both Hindu and Muslim. Similar Topics Shays’s Rebellion The mutiny broke out in the Bengal army because it was only in the military sphere that Indians were organized. The pretext for revolt was the introduction of the new Enfield rifle . To load it, the sepoys had to bite off the ends of lubricated cartridges. A rumour spread among the sepoys that the grease used to lubricate the cartridges was a mixture of pigs’ and cows’ lard; thus, to have oral contact with it was an insult to both Muslims and Hindus. There is no conclusive evidence that either of these materials was actually used on any of the cartridges in question.

However, the perception that the cartridges were tainted added to the larger suspicion that the British were trying to undermine Indian traditional society. For their part, the British did not pay enough attention to the growing level of sepoy discontent. The rebellion In late March 1857 a sepoy named Mangal Pandey attacked British officers at the military garrison in Barrackpore . He was arrested and then executed by the British in early April. Later in April sepoy troopers at Meerut refused the Enfield cartridges, and, as punishment, they were given long prison terms, fettered, and put in jail. This punishment incensed their comrades, who rose on May 10, shot their British officers, and marched to Delhi , where there were no European troops. There the local sepoy garrison joined the Meerut men, and by nightfall the aged pensionary Mughal emperor Bahādur Shah II had been nominally restored to power by a tumultuous soldiery. The seizure of Delhi provided a focus and set the pattern for the whole mutiny, which then spread throughout northern India.

With the exception of the Mughal emperor and his sons and Nana Sahib , the adopted son of the deposed Maratha peshwa, none of the important Indian princes joined the mutineers. Gandhi and Indian History From the time of the mutineers’ seizure of Delhi, the British operations to suppress the mutiny were divided into three parts. First came the desperate struggles at Delhi, Kanpur, and Lucknow during the summer; then the operations around Lucknow in the winter of 1857–58, directed by Sir Colin Campbell; and finally the “mopping up” campaigns of Sir Hugh Rose in early 1858. Peace was officially declared on July 8, 1858. Britannica Stories Ringling Bros. Folds Its Tent A grim feature of the mutiny was the ferocity that accompanied it. The mutineers commonly shot their British officers on rising and were responsible for massacres at Delhi, Kanpur, and elsewhere. The murder of women and children enraged the British, but in fact some British officers began to take severe measures before they knew that any such murders had occurred. In the end the reprisals far outweighed the original excesses.

Hundreds of sepoys were bayoneted or fired from cannons in a frenzy of British vengeance (though some British officers did protest the bloodshed). Aftermath The immediate result of the mutiny was a general housecleaning of the Indian administration. The East India Company was abolished in favour of the direct rule of India by the British government. In concrete terms, this did not mean much, but it introduced a more personal note into the government and removed the unimaginative commercialism that had lingered in the Court of Directors. The financial crisis caused by the mutiny led to a reorganization of the Indian administration’s finances on a modern basis. The Indian army was also extensively reorganized. Another significant result of the mutiny was the beginning of the policy of consultation with Indians. The Legislative Council of 1853 had contained only Europeans and had arrogantly behaved as if it were a full-fledged parliament. It was widely felt that a lack of communication with Indian opinion had helped to precipitate the crisis. Accordingly, the new council of 1861 was given an Indian-nominated element.

The educational and public works programs (roads, railways, telegraphs, and irrigation) continued with little interruption; in fact, some were stimulated by the thought of their value for the transport of troops in a crisis. But insensitive British-imposed social measures that affected Hindu society came to an abrupt end. Connect with Britannica Facebook Twitter YouTube Instagram Pinterest Finally, there was the effect of the mutiny on the people of India themselves. Traditional society had made its protest against the incoming alien influences, and it had failed. The princes and other natural leaders had either held aloof from the mutiny or had proved, for the most part, incompetent. From this time all serious hope of a revival of the past or an exclusion of the West diminished. The traditional structure of Indian society began to break down and was eventually superseded by a Westernized class system, from which emerged a strong middle class with a heightened sense of Indian nationalism . More about Indian Mutiny Why did the Sepoy Rebellion happen? | Reference.com Why did the Sepoy Rebellion happen? A: Quick Answer The Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 was the result of a number of aggressive policies imposed by the British upon their colonial Indian subjects in the years preceding the revolt.

These included vast territorial expansion; divide and conquer military strategies; and practices which revealed a gross insensitivity towards religious norms that prevailed in the region, according to About.com. Full Answer British colonization in India was, from the start, primarily an economic venture. By the 1840s in particular, the British East India Company had to reverse financial setbacks, so huge new swaths of previously autonomous Indian territories were brought under British rule. As more territory came under control, more local Indian troops, referred to as Sepoys, were needed to police it, as the British regular army alone was far too small. As more Sepoys entered British service, they more often found themselves fighting against peoples from neighboring areas that they had previously not considered enemies. This generated considerable resentment against the British. To make matters worse, there were widespread allegations that the British used torture to secure cooperation from locals, a fear addressed by the Madras Native Association in 1856, one year before the rebellion. The final straw was likely a religious one. Rifles of the day were typically used cartridges that contained both the projectile and the powder, and the soldier usually had to bite the tip off of the cartridge while loading the weapon.

With the then new Enfield Rifle, the British issued cartridges sealed with beef tallow and pork fat. According to Emory University, most Sepoys were either Hindu or Muslim, and since each religion considers one of those food sources forbidden, many of the Sepoys became outraged. This apparently blatant and radical insensitivity toward Indian religious conviction further fueled the embers of rebellion, and some historians, notably J.A.B Palmer and John Kaye, insist that this was the immediate catalyst for the eventual bloodshed of 1857. BBC - History - British History in depth: British India and the 'Great Rebellion' British India and the 'Great Rebellion' By Professor Peter Marshall Last updated 2011-02-17 In 1857 a large part of the Indian army rebelled against the British authorities; the ensuing bloodshed sent shockwaves throughout colonial Britain. What lessons were learned and how did the rebellion shape modern India? Professor Peter Marshall analyses the impact of the uprising. On this page Print this page Imperial authority examined In May 1857 soldiers of the Bengal army shot their British officers, and marched on Delhi.

Their mutiny encouraged rebellion by considerable numbers of Indian civilians in a broad belt of northern and central India - roughly from Delhi in the west to Benares in the east. For some months the British presence in this area was reduced to beleaguered garrisons, until forces were able to launch offensives that had restored imperial authority by 1858. Shock inevitably stimulated much self-examination... British public opinion was profoundly shocked by the scale of the uprising and by the loss of life on both sides - involving the massacre by the rebels of captured Europeans, including women and children, and the indiscriminate killing of Indian soldiers and civilians by the avenging British armies. Shock inevitably stimulated much self-examination, out of which emerged an explanation of these terrible events; this explanation has exercised a powerful influence over opinion in Britain ever since. Map of India showing the areas affected by rebellion in 1857 © Indians were assumed to have been a deeply conservative people whose traditions and ways of life had been disregarded by their British rulers. Reforms, new laws, new technology, even Christianity, had been forced upon them. They found these deeply offensive and were driven to resist them with violence.

Top A history in two halves British soldiers racing to quash the Indian mutiny at Lucknow in 1857 © The lesson that the British drew from 1857 was that caution must prevail: Indian traditions must be respected and the assumed guardians of these traditions - priests, princes or landholders - were to be conciliated under firm authoritarian British rule. Thus British Indian history in the 19th century is often divided into two halves, separated by the great watershed of 1857: an age of ill-considered reform, followed by an age of iron conservatism. Conservatism was eventually to provoke a different form of reaction, the nationalism out of which modern India was to be born. ...what the British intended and what they were able to achieve were often very different things. There are, however, serious difficulties in any interpretation of 19th-century Indian history that divides it into an age of reform that gave way under the shock of rebellion to an age of conservatism. This may in a very rough sense reflect the intentions of India's British rulers, but what the British intended and what they were able to achieve were often very different things.

Outcomes depended as much on the inclinations and efforts of Indian people as on the initiatives of their rulers. Top Before the rebellion In the first half of the 19th century, when the East India Company still ruled India on Britain's behalf, there was a heady rhetoric of reform and improvement in some British circles. The aspiration of Thomas Macaulay - a member of the Company's ruling council in 1835, as well as a historian - to foster 'a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions in morals and in intellect' is often quoted. Less often quoted is his preceding sentence, in which he admitted that 'it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people'. The means of the Company's government were indeed limited. The greater part of its resources went on its armed forces, not on schemes for improvement. An insecure government of necessity moved cautiously, in spite of its rhetoric, and at the time the Indian economy was generally stagnant. The authority of Brahmins and of doctrines of caste separation grew stronger, not weaker. European influences were strongest in the towns of India.

This was especially true in the old bases of British trade, such as Calcutta, Madras or Bombay, where a new Indian intelligentsia had begun to take root. Whatever the British may have intended, their early rule seems generally to have consolidated the hold of what they regarded as 'traditional' intellectuals, rather than displacing them by new ones, and the authority of Brahmins and of doctrines of caste separation grew stronger, not weaker. In the countryside the vital issues were the control of the land, the amount of tax the peasant farmers had to pay, and the opportunities they had to find outlets for their surplus crops. Early British occupation was disruptive: aristocracies lost power and influence to the new rulers, the conditions under which land was held could be changed, and taxation was more rigorously enforced. It took time for winners to emerge in this situation, people who had been able to extract gains from the new order, and who would compensate for those who had lost out. Top Disaffection Any attempt to explain the revolt of 1857 as traditional India's rejection of modern reform is far too crude. Impulses towards change before then had been weak and uneven.

In Bengal and in the south, which had long been under British rule, there were no revolts. In the areas that did rebel in 1857, the British seem to have succeeded in creating disaffection, and deposed noble Indians from their thrones, without as yet attracting significant support. To be a soldier in the Bengal army had become an occupation to which high status was attached. In the most recent British acquisition of all, the kingdom of Awadh (Oudh), annexed in 1856, not only had the ruler been deposed but many landowners had lost control over what they regarded as their estates. Taxes were high throughout the region, and there were few opportunities for the enterprising to make a profit. Western influences were limited in the towns, but the first Christian missions had appeared there, and new colleges had opened, which seemed to be an unwelcome intrusion to many devout Hindus and Muslims. They also fed fears of a Christian offensive and of forced conversions. Northern India had a long tradition of spasmodic disorder and resistance to government.

These upheavals would probably have become more intense in the mid 19th century, but could have been contained if the British had not alienated a group of people on whom their security depended. These people were the soldiers, or sepoys, of the Bengal army, whose mutiny eventually set off the 1857 rebellion. The Bengal army was recruited not from Bengal itself but from northern India, especially from Awadh. To be a soldier in the Bengal army had become an occupation to which high status was attached. The sepoys saw themselves as an élite. Over many years the Bengal army had fought faithfully for the British, but on their own terms. They would not go overseas and they required an elaborate train of camp followers, and by 1857 the British high command was losing patience with this. Supplies of more flexible soldiers who would not stand on their privileges were becoming available in Nepal and the Punjab, and the Bengal army was told it must modernise - by accepting obligations to serve outside India, and by using a new rifle.

The spark that ignited the soldiers' great fear - that their cherished status was to be undermined - was the rumour concerning the use of pig and cow fat, forbidden in the Muslim and Hindu religions respectively, as lubricant on the cartridges for the new rifles. Cantonment after cantonment rebelled. When the soldiers refused to acknowledge British authority, the way was left open for disaffected princes and aristocrats, and for village and town people with grievances, to revolt alongside the soldiers. Top A new royal government Indian cavalry at the coronation of George VI in 1936 © After the rebellion had been put down, the new royal government of India that replaced that of the East India Company promised that it had no intention of imposing 'our convictions on any of our subjects'. It distanced itself further from the Christian missionaries. A stop was put to the deposing of princes, and greater care was shown to the rights of landlords. The major part of the army was in future to be drawn from so-called 'martial races'.

The huge parades, or durbars, at which the new empress of India received the allegiance of the hierarchies of traditional India through her viceroy, seemed to symbolise the new conservatism of the regime. To be a soldier in the Bengal army had become an occupation to which high status was attached. Yet beneath the trappings of conservatism, Indian society changed much more rapidly in the second half of the 19th century than it had done in the first. The British had much more to offer Indians. Imports of Western technology had been limited before the 1850s. Thereafter a great railway system was constructed - 28,000 miles of track being laid by 1904 - and major canal schemes were instituted that more than doubled the area under irrigation in the last 20 years of the century. The railways, the vastly increased capacity of steamships, and the opening of the Suez Canal linked Indian farmers with world markets to a much greater degree. A small, but significant, minority of them could profit from such opportunities to sell surplus crops and acquire additional land. Some industries developed, notably Indian-owned textile manufacturing in western India.

The horrific scale of the famines of the 1880s and 1890s showed how limited any economic growth had been, but the stagnation of the early 19th century had been broken. Universities, colleges and schools proliferated in the towns and cities, most of them opened by Indian initiative. They did not produce replica English men and women, as Macaulay had hoped, but Indians who were able to use English in addition to their own languages, to master imported technologies and methods of organisation and who were willing to adopt what they found attractive in British culture. The dominant intellectual movements cannot be called Westernisation. They were revival or reform movements in Hinduism and Islam, and were the development of cultures that found expression in Indian languages. Within the constraints of a colonial order, a modern India was emerging by the end of the 19th century. British rule of course had an important role in this process, but the country that was emerging fulfilled the aspirations of Indians, rather than colonial designs of what a modern India ought to be. Aftermath of the Revolt: India 1857-1870 by Thomas R.

Metcalf (Princeton, 1964) Awadh in Revolt, 1857-1858: A Study of Popular Resistance by Rudrangshu Mukherjee (Delhi, 1984) 'India 1818-1860: The Two Faces of Colonialism' by D. A. Washbrook, published in Andrew Porter, ed., The Oxford History of the British Empire, III, The Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1999) Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal (London, 1998) The New Cambridge History of India, II. 1, Indian Society and the Making of the British Empire by C. A. Bayly (Cambridge, 1988) The Peasant Armed: The Indian Revolt of 1857 edited by C. A. Bayly (Oxford, 1986) Links The Oriental and India Office Collections in the British Library provides access to material relating to all the cultures of Asia and North Africa and the European interaction with them.

The National Army Museum , Chelsea has information specifically about the Indian mutiny. The Royal Military Academy , Sandhurst, has a permanent exhibition on the Indian army. Places to visit The British Empire and Commonwealth Museum , Clock Tower Yard, Temple Meads, Bristol, BS1 6QH, will open its galleries on 26 September 2002. There will be a temporary exhibition, called 'India: Pioneering Photographs, 1850-1900' during 2002. Meanwhile, inquiries to see the collections of photographs and documentary archives or to use the oral history archive are welcome (telephone: 0117 925 4980). Top About the author Professor Peter Marshall is Professor Emeritus at King's College, London University, where he was Rhodes Professor of Imperial History from 1981 until his retirement in 1993.

He is the author of a number of books on the early history of British India and was editor of The Cambridge Illustrated History of the British Empire (Cambridge, 1996; paperback edition, 2001) and of the second volume, The Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1998) of The Oxford History of the British Empire. He was President of the Royal Historical Society, 1996-2000.

Question: In which country did the 'Sepoy Mutiny' of 1857 take place?
Answer: INDIA